Herodotus (484 BC-425 BC) was an ancient Greek historian who was known as "the Father of History", as he was the first writer to treat historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation and compiling materials into a historiographical narrative. His most famous work was the Histories, a compilation of biographies about Asian and Persian rulers and histories of the battles of the Greco-Persian Wars.
Biography[]
Herodotus in Delphi, 431 BC
Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus, Caria, Asia Minor, Persian Empire in 484 BC, and he came from an influential Greek family. His family was involved in a failed uprising against Lygdamis II of Halicarnassus, forcing them to go into exile on the island of Samos. He became a traveler and storyteller, and he traveled to Egypt in 454 BC, traveling to Tyre next, down the Euphrates to Babylon, and then to Athens in 447 BC. He was narrowly unable to become an Athenian citizen, but he was financially rewarded for his storytelling, and, in 443 BC, he migrated to Thurium, Magna Graecia as part of an Athenian-sponsored colony. Herodotus became a highly-regarded historian and storyteller, telling historical stories at popular festivals. At the Olympic Games, he read his entire Histories (the lives of figures such as Croesus, Cyrus the Great, Cambyses II, Bardiya, Darius I, and Xerxes I and the battles of the Greco-Persian Wars) in one sitting. Although his stories were criticized for their obvious legends and fanciful accounts, he claimed that he wrote what he had been told, and his works provided a wealth of confirmed information.
Herodotus was also secretly an agent of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, with the Athenian leader Pericles sending him on a mission to end the war. He was introduced by the sailor Barnabas to the mercenary Kassandra, and the two of them investigated the Cult of Kosmos, its corruption of the Oracles of Delphi, and its plots. Herodotus accompanied Kassandra on her adventures aboard the Adrestia, compiling stories of their adventures in the Lost Histories, a section of Histories which was missing until Layla Hassan discovered it in 2018 alongside the Spear of Leonidas I. He showed Kassandra a strange structure on the island of Andros, and he also took her to Athens to meet Pericles himself. Herodotus would later find patronage at the court of the Kings of Macedon, and he died in Pella, Macedonia in 425 BC at the age of 59.